A new book by Walter Donway: HOW PHILOSOPHERS CHANGE CIVILIZATIONS: THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
HOW PHILOSOPHERS CHANGE CIVILIZATIONS: THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Romantic Revolution Books...
This is a history of the Age of Enlightenment that looks at "how they did it": how diverse intellectuals who shared a passion for ideas created over more than a century what we know as "the modern world." Our secular world of reason and science, individualism and equality before the law, human rights and political freedom, constitutionalism and capitalism, and technology serving human happiness is the creation of philosophical ideas.
They were specific ideas identified, demonstrated, and popularized by European and American philosophers--professional or self-identified by their passion for ideas--in the 18th century, what then was called the “Age of Reason."
The brightest, most thrusting, determined men and women of the age often chose to make ideas their life's work at the risk of poverty, public condemnation, excommunication from the church, imprisonment, or death. They chose to risk everything to lift the dark cloud of superstition, dogmatism, and rule by authority and dictates that had been life in Europe for centuries—to bring to the world the light seen by eyes opened to reality.
This made the Age of Enlightenment the most important era in Western history. The story is told, here, through some 45 varied profiles of philosophers, scientists, novelists, inventors, economists, and poets—all defined by their shared ideas, goals, projects, and aspirations.
This book sets itself apart as a history by posing the question: How did the “new philosophers” in the 18th century change Britain, continental Europe, and North America--and capture the attention of their world? What talents and skills, what existing and new vehicles of expression, and what avenues and opportunities for communication did they have or invent that reached and changed minds and inspired action decade after decade?
Our world today desperately needs a rebirth and wider dissemination of Enlightenment ideas and ideals. We could lose it, this world we call "modern" bequeathed to us by the Age of Reason. The attack on modernity began even before the end of the 18th century. By now, the so-called "postmodernists" dominate university education, the intellectual professions, and the media. The author traces these developments in a series of appendices for readers who have accompanied him on the trip through the history of the Enlightenment.
Today, the attack on the modern world born in the Enlightenment is far advanced as evident in what we call our “mainstream media” and what it chooses as our nightly fare of “information” and “opinion.” The two no longer readily distinguishable, which is just one manifestation of the postmodernist axiom that all “dialogue” serves “power relations"—the only choice what race, class, or other collective one advocates.
The Age of Enlightenment: How Philosophers Change Civilizations ends with an essay on the foremost contemporary heir of the Enlightenment, Ayn Rand, and her philosophy of "Objectivism"--a reaffirmation, refinement, and present-day application of Enlightenment ideas and ideals. And by that token, a virtual catalogue of ideas and values that postmodernists oppose.
An advocate for Ayn Rand’s philosophy is a contemporary Enlightenment intellectual in all essentials: the epistemology of reason based on logic and empiricism, the ethics of self-interest based on man’s nature, the politics of limited state power to liberate the individual to pursue happiness, and the social order of capitalism and free trade to promote human flourishing.
The philosophical roots of the ideas that still make America exceptional, how those ideals shaped the modern world, and the genesis and present malignant advance of the philosophical attack on that world--for the willing student, this explains it all.
Both the Kindle and paperback versions are available. The paperback is a better experience because footnotes, which add a vast amount of additional information and insight, are at the bottom of pages instead of at the back. I have kept the paperback price rock bottom (the least Amazon permits), but it is still about $15 because the book is 600 pages.
Romantic Revolution Books...
This is a history of the Age of Enlightenment that looks at "how they did it": how diverse intellectuals who shared a passion for ideas created over more than a century what we know as "the modern world." Our secular world of reason and science, individualism and equality before the law, human rights and political freedom, constitutionalism and capitalism, and technology serving human happiness is the creation of philosophical ideas.
They were specific ideas identified, demonstrated, and popularized by European and American philosophers--professional or self-identified by their passion for ideas--in the 18th century, what then was called the “Age of Reason."
The brightest, most thrusting, determined men and women of the age often chose to make ideas their life's work at the risk of poverty, public condemnation, excommunication from the church, imprisonment, or death. They chose to risk everything to lift the dark cloud of superstition, dogmatism, and rule by authority and dictates that had been life in Europe for centuries—to bring to the world the light seen by eyes opened to reality.
This made the Age of Enlightenment the most important era in Western history. The story is told, here, through some 45 varied profiles of philosophers, scientists, novelists, inventors, economists, and poets—all defined by their shared ideas, goals, projects, and aspirations.
This book sets itself apart as a history by posing the question: How did the “new philosophers” in the 18th century change Britain, continental Europe, and North America--and capture the attention of their world? What talents and skills, what existing and new vehicles of expression, and what avenues and opportunities for communication did they have or invent that reached and changed minds and inspired action decade after decade?
Our world today desperately needs a rebirth and wider dissemination of Enlightenment ideas and ideals. We could lose it, this world we call "modern" bequeathed to us by the Age of Reason. The attack on modernity began even before the end of the 18th century. By now, the so-called "postmodernists" dominate university education, the intellectual professions, and the media. The author traces these developments in a series of appendices for readers who have accompanied him on the trip through the history of the Enlightenment.
Today, the attack on the modern world born in the Enlightenment is far advanced as evident in what we call our “mainstream media” and what it chooses as our nightly fare of “information” and “opinion.” The two no longer readily distinguishable, which is just one manifestation of the postmodernist axiom that all “dialogue” serves “power relations"—the only choice what race, class, or other collective one advocates.
The Age of Enlightenment: How Philosophers Change Civilizations ends with an essay on the foremost contemporary heir of the Enlightenment, Ayn Rand, and her philosophy of "Objectivism"--a reaffirmation, refinement, and present-day application of Enlightenment ideas and ideals. And by that token, a virtual catalogue of ideas and values that postmodernists oppose.
An advocate for Ayn Rand’s philosophy is a contemporary Enlightenment intellectual in all essentials: the epistemology of reason based on logic and empiricism, the ethics of self-interest based on man’s nature, the politics of limited state power to liberate the individual to pursue happiness, and the social order of capitalism and free trade to promote human flourishing.
The philosophical roots of the ideas that still make America exceptional, how those ideals shaped the modern world, and the genesis and present malignant advance of the philosophical attack on that world--for the willing student, this explains it all.
Both the Kindle and paperback versions are available. The paperback is a better experience because footnotes, which add a vast amount of additional information and insight, are at the bottom of pages instead of at the back. I have kept the paperback price rock bottom (the least Amazon permits), but it is still about $15 because the book is 600 pages.
SOURCE URL: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CXSY9W39
